The Jose VilsonIt's not about a salary; it's all about reality.2015-03-29T15:07:07+00:00http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1hourly1http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheJoseVilson?format=skinhttp://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gifTheJoseVilsonhttps://feedburner.google.comWhy I Disagree With Robert Reich on College and Career ReadinessJose Vilson2015-03-29T07:56:03-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14514<p>Last week, many of my friends shared this article from Robert Reich, a critique of the current &#8220;college for all&#8221; movement that&#8217;s forced millions of students into post-college (and for many lifelong) debt to private universities and for-profit banks in the form of loans. From him: The biggest absurdity is that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class. But not every young person ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-i-disagree-with-robert-reich-on-college-and-career-readiness/">Why I Disagree With Robert Reich on College and Career Readiness</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Last week, many of my friends shared <a href="http://robertreich.org/post/114356426465">this article from Robert Reich</a>, a critique of the current &#8220;college for all&#8221; movement that&#8217;s forced millions of students into post-college (and for many lifelong) debt to private universities and for-profit banks in the form of loans. From him:</p>
<blockquote><p>The biggest absurdity is that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class. But not every young person is suited to four years of college. They may be bright and ambitious but they won’t get much out of it. They’d rather be doing something else, like making money or painting murals. They feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary. Yet if they start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures. Even if they get the degree, they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for years.</p></blockquote>
<p>I agree with <em>most</em> of the article. Much of the piece is centered on middle to upper-class white parents insofar as some of the social indicators are concerned. I can see how the pressure to push <em>everyone</em> to college only exacerbates inequity, because all the first and second generation college grads I know always feel a responsibility to give back to their families, an added burden that only makes middle-class status even more unattainable. Even when I went to college all those years ago <em>ahem</em>, people in those circles were talking about MBAs and masters degrees as the true barometer for gaining entry into the middle class.</p>
<p>Now that I&#8217;m 10 years deep into teaching, I think getting everyone through college as it currently exists is a horrible idea.</p>
<p>Yet, whenever someone brings up the idea of vocational schools and training, I tend to wince, not because vocational schools are somehow lesser than four-year colleges, but because the idea usually comes from teachers and school staff that want to dump troublesome kids somewhere, anywhere really. A few years ago, I found liberals who brought up vocational training <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/on-ridiculous-assertions-by-some-white-liberals/">to be, at best, myopic</a>. Not much has changed.</p>
<p>Whenever we bring up vocational schooling, we should always keep in mind who folks have in mind when they say these things. Do we have vocational schools distributed across New Rochelle and Scarsdale as well as Harlem and the Lower East Side? Will we bus rich kids from the suburbs into <em>those</em> schools if there are no spaces available for vocational schools in the suburbs? And how does that affect the current Common Core agenda of &#8220;college and career ready?&#8221; Who&#8217;s going to college? Who has legacy? Who&#8217;s getting a career? Who&#8217;s going to have to go to college to get that career? What careers are favored and valued in our society? <em>Who</em> sets the prototype for what those careers would look like? Who has the access to the types of careers that are sustainable, professional, and valuable to our society?</p>
<p>These questions surely complicate Robert Reich&#8217;s piece, and necessarily so.</p>
<p>He says that we continue to force kids through a funnel called the four-year college track, but, some of our kids are forced down school-to-prison pipeline when they&#8217;re <em>not</em> forced down the four-year track. I would rather have high-schoolers choose their own path, and equip them with the skills to thrive regardless of what they choose. With wealth being one of the best (if not the best) predictors of SAT / ACT scores, one has to pay close attention to the ways in which we perpetuate systemic inequity by genuflecting to the current American capitalist zeitgeist.</p>
<p>In the middle of ripping apart the idea that everyone <em>has </em>to go to college, we should pay close attention to who does or doesn&#8217;t have to go to college and whether those jobs that do or don&#8217;t require college will be there for those with the least access points. Until then, my kids will keep hearing &#8220;college.&#8221;</p>
<p>p.s. &#8211; <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/03/26/essay-challenging-kevin-careys-new-book-higher-education">This essay on Kevin Carey&#8217;s book <em>The End of College</em></a> written by Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab is so, so good.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/09/robert-reich-walmart_n_5295343.html">photo c/o</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-i-disagree-with-robert-reich-on-college-and-career-readiness/">Why I Disagree With Robert Reich on College and Career Readiness</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/3OaO9RGBwwQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/why-i-disagree-with-robert-reich-on-college-and-career-readiness/feed/0http://thejosevilson.com/why-i-disagree-with-robert-reich-on-college-and-career-readiness/This Is Not A Test, New York Edition [Thanks, NYCoRE]Jose Vilson2015-03-23T17:22:00-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14508<p>First, let me thank the New York Coalition of Radical Educators for putting me on. When they originally asked me to come on, they wanted me to do &#8220;This Is Not A Test,&#8221; the poem, but the urgency of now called. Without further delay, here&#8217;s the video from this past weekend. (Special shout-out to Norm Scott for the video.) Welcome, New York, to the latest installment of a people’s march ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/this-is-not-a-test-new-york-edition-thanks-nycore/">This Is Not A Test, New York Edition [Thanks, NYCoRE]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p><em>First, let me thank the <a href="http://www.nycore.org/" target="_blank">New York Coalition of Radical Educators</a> for putting me on. When they originally asked me to come on, they wanted me to do &#8220;This Is Not A Test,&#8221; the poem, but the urgency of now called. Without further delay, here&#8217;s the video from this past weekend. (Special shout-out to <a href="http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/">Norm Scott for the video.</a>)</em></p>
<p><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/122931926" width="761" height="428" frameborder="0" title="NYCORE 2015 Jose Vilson" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>Welcome, New York, to the latest installment of a people’s march<br />
For the next four minutes, I will ask you to defy protocol<br />
Disband the status quo<br />
Bust open these deformed gates<br />
Unlock the teachers’ lounge<br />
Unlock the teachers’ lounge<br />
Unlock the teachers’ lounge<br />
I beg your pardon, but I am not your proctor<br />
I march with the protestors, and our hands are raised,<br />
A pledge for a new narrative<br />
This is not a test!</p>
<p>This is not a test, Mr. Duncan.<br />
This is an assessment written against the idea that the dates and places of our history<br />
Can be shrunk to the choice between B and C<br />
And that is our purpose for this assembly<br />
An extended response to a failing corporatist agenda<br />
A reflection on the state of our most public of options<br />
Measured through the rubric of human rights<br />
But this is not a test!</p>
<p>This is not a test, Ms. Tisch<br />
Take note: this is not us asking<br />
This is not us begging<br />
This is not us pleading<br />
This is us fighting for all things equal<br />
This is us uniting as a more perfect union<br />
This is us reminding New York of a promissory note unpaid<br />
This is us writing our own documentation when politicians refuse our kids the<br />
opportunity<br />
We are all DREAMers, and this is not a test!</p>
<p>This is the generation of children from the classrooms<br />
where teachers boldly stood and thought kids could learn<br />
Educators, stand firm, whether in cafeterias, mess halls, or prison halls,<br />
School is in session<br />
And we submit our entire lives for millions of students a year<br />
So even when I stand in front of the class, I am always StudentsFirst<br />
This is not a test!</p>
<p>This is not a test, Mr. Cuomo<br />
This is an exam unmoved by presidential aspirations, a test you’ll have to retake because the bar’s too high and I?<br />
A bubble you cannot erase<br />
A commission you cannot deactivate<br />
An ethic you cannot dismiss<br />
A mouth you cannot tape<br />
A heat you cannot beat<br />
And you look like you’ve lost weight with approval ratings so slim<br />
Our message so indigestible, I am a cuisine you cannot eat<br />
As my kids who you’ll never visit would say, let me go in<br />
I am a zephyr teaching out here for a decade, so I am a debate you cannot win<br />
Let me be obstinate, obtuse,<br />
Grant us reprieve from VAM or simply vamoose<br />
Hold not our public monies hostage the way billionaires cradle your subservient neck on the Upper West Side<br />
Opt out of Wall St. handouts the way parents have opted out of your Pearson-poisoned handshakes and back-pats<br />
Democratize, neo-liberal Democrats, because we’re past polling for justice when it’s just-us<br />
Choke not our public schools into submission and cop your plea afterword<br />
I can’t breathe, and this is not a test!</p>
<p>This is not a test, Mr. King<br />
Given an answer sheet, these students shaded in L-O-V-E over A-B-C-D<br />
A set of standards commonly set forth long before<br />
Acing geography by means of peace instead of war<br />
Shaping the world henceforth<br />
They will elevate our math to where the sum of the people is greater than the parts<br />
Becoming fluent in the languages of English, Spanish, and caring<br />
New York, please put down your pencils<br />
This is not a test!<br />
This is not a test!<br />
This is not a test!<br />
Deformers, you are dismissed.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NYCoRE?fref=photo" target="_blank">photo c/o</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/this-is-not-a-test-new-york-edition-thanks-nycore/">This Is Not A Test, New York Edition [Thanks, NYCoRE]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/jBPEpWPzhAM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/this-is-not-a-test-new-york-edition-thanks-nycore/feed/0http://thejosevilson.com/this-is-not-a-test-new-york-edition-thanks-nycore/New York City’s Fractured Relationship With Teachers Of ColorJose Vilson2015-03-17T19:12:31-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14498<p>I forgot to tell y&#8217;all something at last week&#8217;s teacher of color panel. Our system is simply not suited to support teachers of color. In last week&#8217;s discussion with Linda Darling-Hammond, Bettye Perkins, Cliff Janey, and Richard Ingersoll at the Teaching and Learning Conference, we had a lively discussion on the shortage of teachers of color. My comments came out of left field because I&#8217;m sure some of the audience ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/new-york-citys-fractured-relationship-with-teachers-of-color/">New York City&#8217;s Fractured Relationship With Teachers Of Color</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>I forgot to tell y&#8217;all something at last week&#8217;s teacher of color panel. Our system is simply not suited to support teachers of color.</p>
<p>In last week&#8217;s discussion with Linda Darling-Hammond, Bettye Perkins, Cliff Janey, and Richard Ingersoll at the <a href="http://teachingandlearning2015.org/event/teacherdiversity/">Teaching and Learning Conference</a>, we had a lively discussion on the shortage of teachers of color. My comments came out of left field because I&#8217;m sure some of the audience members wanted me to get more academic. Yet, after looking at the panel, I knew the work of the panelists there, all of whom have laudable pedigrees in their craft. My role was, as usual, to keep it real.:</p>
<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='761' height='459' src='http://www.youtube.com/embed/x6U2tKTpoFU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen='true'></iframe></span></p>
<p>When I say that institutional racism is a crucial factor in teacher shortage, it&#8217;s important to understand a few things:</p>
<ul>
<li>High poverty schools in New York City already have staff diversity, with about half of all teachers in these schools coming from Black, Latino, Asian, and other backgrounds.</li>
<li>High poverty schools tend to get shut down, transformed, restructured, and taken over more frequently than low poverty schools every and anywhere in the country where this practice is common.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/2014teacherdemographics.pdf">As the school poverty levels get lower</a>, the levels of Black and Latino teachers decreases dramatically (Asian teachers level off at 5-6% throughout.)</li>
<li>Teachers of color have entered the profession at faster rates than their white peers.</li>
<li>Education is highly valued as a profession in communities of color. For example, African-American college students consider education as one of the highest-desired fields they&#8217;d get into post-college.</li>
<li>Teachers of color leave the profession at faster rates than their white peers.</li>
<li>According to <a href="http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1232&amp;context=gse_pubs">Ingersoll and May&#8217;s work on this</a>, teachers of color leave because they&#8217;re frustrated with administration [non-specific], with overtesting and accountability measures, and autonomy, not salary.</li>
</ul>
<p>When I say, &#8220;<a href="http://thejosevilson.com/on-the-reason-why-you-may-only-get-one-black-male-teacher-ever-in-your-life-if-at-all/">it&#8217;s not about a salary, it&#8217;s all about reality</a>,&#8221; I&#8217;m echoing an axiom that&#8217;s been shouted from the rooftops by so many educators of color. Many of us know what we&#8217;re getting into, but we see the inequities firsthand. We have different pathways by which we got in, either alternative certification programs like Teach for America and NYC Teaching Fellows or traditional routes like Bank Street College or Hunter College. We get recruited with plethora of images of heroism and &#8220;pay it forward&#8221; theatrics, which I fully understand. For many of us who sought to affect change in our schools, we&#8217;re immediately snapped out of our naiveté, staring directly at the outdated curricula, the flimsy laptops, and the antiquated infrastructure and think &#8220;It&#8217;s worse than I thought.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, we leave.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s more is that, when teachers of color seek schools that have equitable conditions, we won&#8217;t get hired in those places because they tend to be predominantly white institutions. Funny how this discussion of more teachers of color rubs some folks the wrong way, as if there&#8217;s an army of colored teachers coming to take seats from white teachers and stripping them of their jobs. In fact, white teachers in New York City seem to have more options, namely teaching in low-, medium, and high-poverty schools <em>and </em>central offices, <em>and </em>consultant jobs, <em>and </em>the intra-school non-profit industrial complex, <em>and</em> administration.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s easy for us to forget that some of my skinfolk ain&#8217;t my kinfolk, and not <em>every </em>teacher of color ought to teach our child. That, too, goes across the board. We need to look at the color of every teacher&#8217;s conscious, for sure. It just so happens that the color of teachers&#8217; skins can be a deterrent for society to find their character. Racism.</p>
<p>Anecdotally and personally, I can tell you the last 12 years of BloomKlein felt like an investment in corporate culture as well, and with that came many of the tropes that sought to fracture the relationships between veteran staff and new staff. More of the people who came to inspect schools and deliver the accountability framework happened to be young and white with a grey suit to boot. In Tweed-run meetings, people with only a couple of years of teaching experience felt comfortable with deriding veterans in high-poverty schools as doing things &#8220;the old way&#8221; and &#8220;doing a huge disservice to the kids.&#8221; This had a profound effect on teacher morale across the school system, but was particularly acute for veteran teachers of color, who were often the only adults left after years of turmoil at their schools.</p>
<p>We need to create equitable funding systems, professional development around cultural competence, and better systems for teacher voice and autonomy, things that don&#8217;t differ much from what <em>all </em>teachers want. The stakes are higher for people who tend to work in high-poverty schools, which just so happen to have more people of color across the board. Within schools, we need to find ways to have substantive, difficult conversations so everyone in the building can reflect on their practice and better serve students, and that includes discussions of race, diversity, power, and community relations.</p>
<p>Whenever we raise the bar for supporting a subset of educators, we help <em>all</em> teachers. Not a trickle down, but a gushing up.</p>
<p>But, if I&#8217;m looking at all these pieces in sum, I would think our system is inhospitable to teachers of color. Because, if you invite someone to your house and you underfeed them, berate them, and treat them unequally, why would you <em>expect </em>them to stay?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bnyee.com/">photo c/o</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/new-york-citys-fractured-relationship-with-teachers-of-color/">New York City&#8217;s Fractured Relationship With Teachers Of Color</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/DrZxTvKG1dE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/new-york-citys-fractured-relationship-with-teachers-of-color/feed/6http://thejosevilson.com/new-york-citys-fractured-relationship-with-teachers-of-color/Up NextJose Vilson2015-03-15T14:45:15-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14489<p>I’ve changed my mind. We need to lift folks doing the work. A few years ago, my former principal, a colleague and I attended a special conference at New York University at the behest of one of NYC Department of Education’s deputy directors, who was slated to be on this crucial panel on high schools. NYU’s School of Education would present its findings on high school graduation rates, finding that the Bloomberg ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/up-next/">Up Next</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>I’ve changed my mind. We need to lift folks doing the work.</p>
<p>A few years ago, my former principal, a colleague and I attended a special conference at New York University at the behest of one of NYC Department of Education’s deputy directors, who was slated to be on this crucial panel on high schools. NYU’s School of Education would present its findings on high school graduation rates, finding that the Bloomberg administration had falsified graduation rates in the name of looking like education reform was happening. The formula was simple: instead of calculating students from freshman year to senior year of high school, NYC schools started to calculate from early senior year of high school to graduation. Anyone can tell you that’s prime-cut bologna, but the rest of the country followed suit because, when it came to Joel Klein’s era, something <i>had to be done, </i>even if we found it was actually nothing.</p>
<p>As I went to get some coffee and bagels, I noticed a gentleman by the name of Pedro Noguera stand next to me with a few graduate students swarming around him to make sure his event felt flawless. Just then I decided to introduce myself before the proceedings began, not looking at him directly because I was preparing my coffee and trying not to look too in awe of his previous work.</p>
<p>“What’s going on, Dr. Noguera?&#8221;<br />
“Hey, what’s your name?&#8221;<br />
“Jose. Vilson.”<br />
“Cool, where are you from?&#8221;<br />
“I teach in Washington Heights. Math to 8th graders.&#8221;<br />
“That’s cool, that’s cool.&#8221;<br />
“By the way, I plan to blog about this. I’ll share it with you when I’m done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Pause. This was back when Twitter still only allowed manual retweets, and news<i>papers</i> had more authenticity than their separate but equal online content.</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s fine. Keep doing your thing.&#8221;</p>
<p>That’s as far as it went. He didn’t come off angry, dismissive, or blustery, and seemed to approach his work matter-of-fact-ly. I caught similar vibes from folks I observed over time, people whose names ring bells and whose presences makes otherwise well-behaved educators shove others for a space in line. (It also makes folks with erratic egos mad jealous, but that’s a whole other post.) After that conference, I still asked myself how I can find my own voice when I still don’t know what my voice ought to sound like, and how many others, Pedro included, already do it so much better than I ever could.</p>
<p>This also came at <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/no-more-heroes/">a time of intolerance for me</a>. More of my personal heroes felt suspect and susceptible to avarice and nonsense. I started to feel like no one ought to look up to anyone, and everyone ought to only look within for inspiration. As those parts about them started nagging me, I felt like disengagement was the only way to purge myself from their flaws, their tics, their inexcusable mistakes.</p>
<p>For months, I felt trapped by my own understandings of them until one day, one of them said, “People who fall in love with my divinity quickly fall out with my humanity.” Or something like that. Shortly after I stopped following their works.</p>
<p>That’s kinda how people do, especially as they reach certain echelons in our minds. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall” has taken on new meaning with the plethora of gossip we have at our fingertips. This is the critique counter-culture we’ve fallen in love with, as if paved roads and lit streets just happen to appear in front of us, and not by the works of someone(s) who perhaps had greater insights than her or his peers. In education, it’s even seedier because folks will try to kill a person’s career if the words “Gates,” “charter,” or “of color” appear on their resumé. as if their own biases don’t merit some examination.</p>
<p>Not to mention that I stay in awe of how Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis looked me in the eyes a few months ago <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/race-class-acceptability-connected-educator/">while recovering from surgery</a> and said, “See? I told you I’m good.&#8221;</p>
<p>I reflected on this on my way to Washington, D.C. for the 2015 National Board Teaching and Learning Conference, where I was slated to do two panels: one on the shortage of teachers of color with Linda Darling-Hammond, Bettye Perkins, Richard Ingersoll, and Clifford Janey, (Thanks, Leo Casey and the Albert Shanker Institute) and a second on teacher authors with Dan Brown, Ilana Garon, and Matt Blackstone. A few years ago, I might have felt in awe of the opportunity. I can’t tell if it’s because I was running on five hours of sleep or because I knew who I had to represent as much as what I had to represent, but I felt like I belonged.</p>
<p>There’s the first layer of “How many <i>teachers</i> get to talk to others about their expertise?”, a second thicker layer of “Your friends and family are here, so there’s no need to feel afraid of what you might say,” a third of “Well, they invited you here, so they’ll have to deal with it when you say whatever it is,” and a deeper fourth of “I had to work thrice and four times as hard for this because of my background, and I could only get on there with ‘damn good’ where ‘reasonable’ would suffice.”</p>
<p>For some, they can get a meeting with a White House special task force with little to offer. I don’t see any other way but to work like a Slash guitar solo. That’s why we must elevate the folks who we believe in, even if we think they need no elevation. When we think their work matters, we can and should support them early, often, and however we can. Otherwise, we’re directly disincentivizing good works.</p>
<p>It also felt strange because, when people mentioned my names with other featured speakers, no one blinked. In a few instances, people even wondered why I hadn’t been “up there” at a few of the plenary sessions. While waiting for the hostess at Busboys and Poets, my friends looked for my book and found it right near Diane Ravitch’s <i>Death and Life</i>, and that felt right to us. I signed more than a dozen books, and it only felt weird that I couldn’t break out my pen fast enough. NEA Vice President Becky Pringle namedropped me after asking a good question for the audience. Pedro Noguera gave me dap and asked me about my book, which he wrote the afterword for.</p>
<p>AACTE president Sharon Robinson came up to me after her plenary and said, “I look at you and say you’re the future of this. You’re up next.” Or something like that.</p>
<p>As I’m riding on the train now, I think to what my day-to-day looks like. A 5:30am alarm awaits me tomorrow, Raisin Bran and the news for breakfast. Many students will learn from me and each other, and some won’t. Teachers and administrators will worry about the upcoming standardized testing season. I will have prepared a lesson keeping in mind my pledge to teach as students learn, not as teachers teach. At 3:30pm, I’ll take a deep breath. This will happen four more times this week, 70 more times this school year. As with most of the work I do, I’m hoping I can spray some victory in the places where pungent defeat smells eternal.</p>
<p>I won’t miss the conference because breaks like these are meant to be temporary and uplifting at once, so we can continue the work we do. Still, because life can be so thankless in these efforts, we need spaces for re-affirmation. Any temporary space that can’t reaffirm us isn’t a space I want to work in.</p>
<p>The things I do happened as a result of the folks whose shoulders I stand, never by accident. In the space I occupy, my ego can never get too large because there’s humbling work that needs to be don<i>e in aeternum</i>. My job and family ground me the way anchors hold fleets at harbor, so even my celebrations last no more than a day, muted in the question of “What’s next?” shortly thereafter.</p>
<p><em>photo caption: LeBron James after losing at the 2011 NBA Finals</em></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/up-next/">Up Next</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/MrdqlaaUdp0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/up-next/feed/2http://thejosevilson.com/up-next/Cultural Competence Means Professional Competence [Edutopia]Jose Vilson2015-03-11T17:30:42-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14484<p>My latest piece at Edutopia explores cultural competence: The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. As teachers, we are often asked to &#8220;do&#8221; a lot more than necessary: memorize standards, plan lessons, prepare for various assessments, call homes, provide a warm environment for our students (and visitors), attend faculty meetings with varying effectiveness and relevance, grade mounds of papers, and take what little ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/cultural-competence-means-professional-competence-edutopia/">Cultural Competence Means Professional Competence [Edutopia]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>My <a href="http://www.edutopia.org//blog/empowering-educators-through-cultural-competence-jose-vilson">latest piece at Edutopia</a> explores cultural competence:</p>
<blockquote><p>The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. As teachers, we are often asked to &#8220;do&#8221; a lot more than necessary: memorize standards, plan lessons, prepare for various assessments, call homes, provide a warm environment for our students (and visitors), attend faculty meetings with varying effectiveness and relevance, grade mounds of papers, and take what little time we have left to eat and sleep, usually less than we should.</p>
<p>Yet, with the laundry list of things that teachers do, check for, and assess, we might be better off staying still and letting students tell us more about what they need.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org//blog/empowering-educators-through-cultural-competence-jose-vilson">Read more here</a>. Share and share alike. Let me know what you think as well. Thanks!</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/cultural-competence-means-professional-competence-edutopia/">Cultural Competence Means Professional Competence [Edutopia]</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/Wc6qP6em570" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/cultural-competence-means-professional-competence-edutopia/feed/3http://thejosevilson.com/cultural-competence-means-professional-competence-edutopia/For What It’s Worth (On Blogging As A Teacher for Eight Years)Jose Vilson2015-03-09T15:17:36-07:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14479<p>I hadn&#8217;t realized this until now, but I&#8217;ve now been blogging on this platform for eight years. I don&#8217;t feel all that different, but I&#8217;m almost certain I am. Looking through some of my older posts, I feel like a whole different writer, probably because I got my butt handed to me on numerous occasions by different editors along the way. As a classroom teacher, I don&#8217;t have the luxury ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/for-what-its-worth-on-blogging-as-a-teacher-for-eight-years/">For What It&#8217;s Worth (On Blogging As A Teacher for Eight Years)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>I hadn&#8217;t realized this until now, but I&#8217;ve now been blogging on this platform for eight years. I don&#8217;t feel all that different, but I&#8217;m almost certain I am.</p>
<p>Looking through some of my older posts, I feel like a whole different writer, probably because I got my butt handed to me on numerous occasions by different editors along the way. As a classroom teacher, I don&#8217;t have the luxury of studying in writing workshops during the weekday or staring at Microsoft Word all day until a piece is well-crafted. So, with the hour and change I have left in my day, I try to get my point across as urgently as I do my lessons.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s changed a lot too is the audience. It used to be a few cool kids and my significant other. Now, everyone but my significant other reads it. To wit, Central keeps blocking my site across all NYC DOE computers, but not within Central. Someone&#8217;s reading, so it ought to be them. (Thanks, DeBlasio.)</p>
<p>If I look at <a href="http://teach.com/teach100">this list of education bloggers</a>, it almost feels like there&#8217;s no reason to put any new voices out there as almost every experience seems covered. The top 50 are generally group blogs, blogs on Education Week or another big site, or corporate-sponsored blogs under the guise of education technology. Being in the top 50, by whatever metric one uses, might have done me some favors, <a href="http://thejosevilson.com/press/">to be sure</a>. It&#8217;s also brought its fair share of challenges, including racist trolls and politically motivated so-called allies. My hood sense flare up almost immediately, so I can see right through these folks&#8217; motives.</p>
<p>So why blog as a teacher? What&#8217;s the point if it seems most edu-bloggers seem most interested in copying the template of ed-tech bloggers or activist bloggers and never developing something new?</p>
<p>Because we desperately need it so that we <em>can</em> break the molds. If the only artifact of good teaching and blogging left on this Earth was <a href="http://www.teachingquality.org/content/blogs/renee-moore/testing-and-civil-rights">Renee Moore</a>, I&#8217;d be perfectly fine with that. Sadly, that won&#8217;t be the case. We&#8217;d be left with &#8230; well, I won&#8217;t name names due to politics, but suffice it to say, it ain&#8217;t cool. We need more voices that write with complex profundity, ones willing to challenge the establishment and themselves at once. I have a whole host of folks whose blogs I love and continually grow before my eyes in scope and vision, and it&#8217;s not enough. With all these folks writing about education without having stepped foot in a classroom as an adult in a meaningful way or at least respecting the voices of folks at the schools, and all these other folks who leave the classroom and work for a corporation to still call themselves teachers, we need people within the schools talking about the work of schools from a personal, professional, and political lens.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think we need more <em>me&#8217;s</em>, since people are only catching on to my blueprint now. I do think that people need to get more real about the conditions within schools and disrupt for the sake of progress, not for the sake of disruption. Write with risk involved. Write like the only way someone&#8217;s ever going to hear you is if you put your job on the line for what you say. As I&#8217;ve said <a href="http://thisisnotatest.us">elsewhere</a>, go hard or go home.</p>
<p>Same rules apply.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/for-what-its-worth-on-blogging-as-a-teacher-for-eight-years/">For What It&#8217;s Worth (On Blogging As A Teacher for Eight Years)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/f9AH44fwG28" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/for-what-its-worth-on-blogging-as-a-teacher-for-eight-years/feed/0http://thejosevilson.com/for-what-its-worth-on-blogging-as-a-teacher-for-eight-years/The Crosshairs of High Expectations and PovertyJose Vilson2015-03-05T16:07:28-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14468<p>Everything is for the kids. Want to create a new program? Say it&#8217;s for the kids. Want to implement a new policy? Tell them it&#8217;s for the kids. Need to raze an entire school in a densely populated school district? Preface it with &#8220;We did it for the kids.&#8221; Need to convince the public that a frivolous measure of student learning like a VAM score should be weighted more than ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/the-crosshairs-of-high-expectations-and-poverty/">The Crosshairs of High Expectations and Poverty</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Everything is <em>for the kids</em>.</p>
<p>Want to create a new program? Say it&#8217;s for the kids. Want to implement a new policy? Tell them it&#8217;s for the kids. Need to raze an entire school in a densely populated school district? Preface it with &#8220;We did it for the kids.&#8221; Need to convince the public that a frivolous measure of student learning like a VAM score should be weighted more than the collective work of everything else the educator does? Just tell some sympathetic media that the kids benefit here. Want to tell kids you&#8217;re right only because you&#8217;re in the classroom? Hide behind kids. Need to take cover while people of color don&#8217;t like your racist remarks? Tell them the kids you work with are predominantly poor and definitely Black or Latino.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not here for the &#8220;both sides&#8221; nonsense. This discussion merits more than that.</p>
<p>Our schools are currently underfunded, and our governments currently exacerbates this through long-standing property tax laws and inadequate state and federal formulas for funding schools. With such little political will to truly overhaul our public education system, frustrations ought to bubble. The safety net has withered from under us as our student population has become more diverse, and we&#8217;ve had little recourse in the educational debate but to stick to linguistic bunkers when discussing under-performing students:</p>
<p>&#8220;Kids don&#8217;t do well because of poverty!&#8221;<br />
&#8220;Are you saying poor kids can&#8217;t learn?&#8221;<br />
&#8220;Poverty means kids can&#8217;t sleep or eat well, and when they come hungry to school, they can&#8217;t concentrate.&#8221;<br />
&#8220;That just sounds like an excuse to not teach students to the best of their abilities. We can&#8217;t accept that!&#8221;</p>
<p>These are arguments all worth listening to, even if the sources sometimes come off as suspect. On the one end, we have to acknowledge that poverty sucks the life out of our kids on multiple measures, from health care and life expectancy to school resources and college admissions. The more we use the word &#8220;poverty&#8221; to discuss learning and living conditions, the more we speak to social justice because, for many of our students, just getting <em>to</em> the classroom can be a struggle that many of my colleagues can&#8217;t comprehend. With the way poverty manifests itself in our schools, schools can&#8217;t always take the same trips, have the same lunches, or afford the same speakers to galvanize students. Schools in these environments are more likely to get shut down or restructured, and their teachers and administrators turn over more often because it&#8217;s that much more difficult.</p>
<p>On the other, too many of us in communities of color (not just Black or Latino, but Asian-American and Native-American communities too) have seen &#8220;highly trained&#8221; <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/why-im-a-public-school-teacher-but-a-private-school-parent/386797/">teachers who come into classrooms with pity</a> and, eventually, resentment when teaching the students there. Many people of color acknowledge the condition they&#8217;re in, but they can&#8217;t afford for teachers to think of them as &#8220;poor&#8221; kids. In Latino communities for instance, when they hear &#8220;poor,&#8221; they also hear <em>pobrecito</em>, which translates to <em>poor thing</em>. People in poverty don&#8217;t want others to see their kids as poor things, but as people living in a condition they can&#8217;t control right now. They entrust their local institutions to do the best job possible, and for every good or average teacher who buoys up their children, there are those one or two who ruin the experience for a generation, too.</p>
<p>Racism, classism, and sexism manifests not just in the structures that hinder our most troubled schools, but also in many individuals within the system itself, carrying their rather visible knapsacks into our schools and dropping their bag of rocks on our kids.</p>
<p>That resentment leads people to turn to homeschooling or, in more recent times, charter schools. (Mostly white) activists are quick to dismiss the concerns of these parents, so, under the guise of &#8220;We want you and those schools don&#8217;t,&#8221; parents will turn to charter schools in these instances. Of course, it also means we have no idea what happens when our students get into school. For profit schools and the non-profit industrial complex have partnered up to shift the national dialogue about what school means, but those schools have made their names with zero-tolerance discipline policies and rampant de-matriculation too, so perhaps people are too quick to call it a solution.</p>
<p>With folks willing to give away our children of color to poverty pimps and school-to-prison-pipeline funders while so-called progressives build canoes for the kids to swim down the tubes (and all of them thinking they&#8217;re working against each other), perhaps political talking points for social justice activists of color just won&#8217;t do.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important for all stakeholders to recognize that poverty matters <em>and</em> that achievement is a complex manifestation of environmental factors. It&#8217;s also why we shouldn&#8217;t treat outliers as miracles nor as rebuttals, but as case studies for us to examine in full (one of my bigger beefs with <a href="http://okcps.capitolhillhs.schooldesk.net/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=iPhTsnxBD24%3D&amp;tabid=1705&amp;mid=1982">EdTrust / Doug Reeves 90-90-90 Theory</a>). It&#8217;s important for all stakeholders to recognize that, despite and because of this, educators have to work to the best of their abilities because we are what&#8217;s left of the social safety net. Educators have to work in the aura of hope because our job is necessarily different, complex, and public. That also means our government officials need to vociferously support and properly fund schools in ways that make equity possible.</p>
<p>Instead of dwelling in the frustration of black parents or using the word &#8220;poverty&#8221; whenever we need an argument about the achievement of students of color, we&#8217;re better off discussing the systemic marriage of poverty and achievement while using our individual pockets of influence to affect change.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t an either / or argument. It&#8217;s a lot closer to the truth than 99% of what I read, though.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. Because, whether good or bad, all of it is for the kids.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/the-crosshairs-of-high-expectations-and-poverty/">The Crosshairs of High Expectations and Poverty</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/i8BHhb6_p8s" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/the-crosshairs-of-high-expectations-and-poverty/feed/14http://thejosevilson.com/the-crosshairs-of-high-expectations-and-poverty/There Is No “How To” For Teacher LeadershipJose Vilson2015-03-01T17:00:02-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14470<p>Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the New Teacher Center conference in San Francisco, CA to discuss teacher leadership. It felt like forever since I used the words &#8220;teacher leader&#8221; to describe myself, but people have no idea what to do with me since I am in the classroom with a full program and am mentoring and speaking out about different ideas in teaching. Thus, teacher leader. Most ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/">There Is No &#8220;How To&#8221; For Teacher Leadership</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the New Teacher Center conference in San Francisco, CA to discuss teacher leadership. It felt like forever since I used the words &#8220;teacher leader&#8221; to describe myself, but people have no idea what to do with me since I am in the classroom with a full program and am mentoring and speaking out about different ideas in teaching. Thus, teacher leader.</p>
<p>Most of my evaluations for my teacher leadership workshop were sterling, surprising because I had to follow folks like Dr. Baruti Kafele, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, and Elena Aguilar, all of whom have solid reputations on the Left Coast in their own right. It must have been the GIFs, but it could also have been the time I left for folks to think through and develop their own plans for teacher leadership within their tables. Yet, two or three folks brought my rating down on one of the dimensions for not actually talking about how-to become a teacher leader.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, I wasn&#8217;t mad. By eliciting reflection questions for everyone, and giving folks time to call out some of the pressing issues with teacher leadership (like when the rest of the staff doesn&#8217;t believe in that teacher leader), I thought I had done better than 95% of other workshops I had been a part of. Yet, I forgot to tell people exactly <em>how to</em> do it.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, I don&#8217;t have a step-by-step guide for becoming a teacher leader, <em>either</em>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s difficult. Most schools develop teacher leadership through content area, like the head of a department or someone who takes the minutes in a grade-level meeting. Some schools might have one or two people who teach part-time and work on curriculum or technology, but those tend to be more progressive than most districts&#8217; standards.</p>
<p>Most people only go to teacher leader groups when they&#8217;ve already felt that quality in them or they don&#8217;t feel like they have a choice but to lead without leaving the classroom.</p>
<p>Plus, teacher leadership, like anything, depends on the school the teacher is in. Therefore, if the school isn&#8217;t compatible with the latest teacher leadership trends, then teacher leadership won&#8217;t work. How that environment is built will determine what the environment needs, and what that environment needs determines how and how well the teacher leads.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the long and short of it. With so many blueprints out there, can there only be one?</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/">There Is No &#8220;How To&#8221; For Teacher Leadership</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/jjwp05U2HsY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/feed/0http://thejosevilson.com/there-is-no-how-to-for-teacher-leadership/What Works For My KidsJose Vilson2015-02-26T16:57:58-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14450<p>The New York Times&#8217; Anna North recently asked me if I was a believer in learning styles, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;No.&#8221; That&#8217;s not my fault, really. As a younger teacher, many of the veteran teachers told me the long list of initiatives that they&#8217;d seen come and go in education research, where &#8220;education research&#8221; is a pejorative, not a compliment. Multiple intelligences. Learning styles. Workshop model. Differentiation. The new math ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/">What Works For My Kids</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>The New York Times&#8217; Anna North recently asked me if I was a believer <a href="http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/are-learning-styles-a-symptom-of-educations-ills/?_r=1">in learning styles</a>, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;No.&#8221; That&#8217;s not my fault, really. As a younger teacher, many of the veteran teachers told me the long list of initiatives that they&#8217;d seen come and go in education research, where &#8220;education research&#8221; is a pejorative, not a compliment. Multiple intelligences. Learning styles. Workshop model. Differentiation. The new math / everyday math. Now? Systems in place. Common Core. Data-driven instruction.</p>
<p>Every time an initiative comes out, we&#8217;re subjected to another professional development session where the person in front of us, administrator or book-hustler, stands in front of us, lauding the latest and greatest. We shift in our seats, prepared to get another set of gobbledygook splayed across our already bloodshot eyes. PowerPoint presentations with tiny letters and business clip art help make convincing arguments for why this specific pedagogical trick will work for our students this time for real, for real. Unconvinced of its efficacy, teachers hope this goes away, and, when it doesn&#8217;t the first few times, start to implement the language without trying it to fidelity.</p>
<p>Here, it&#8217;s easy to blame educators for not having the courage to try something that a random stranger came in with, akin to salesmen trying to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBPoRwog00">develop a monorail in small towns</a>. But teachers with experiences like this might not be so easily swayed, thus the resistance to anything new. Some might call it part of the anti-intellectual movement, but I believe it&#8217;s just a general resistance to the oscillating quality in professional development and the haphazard policies our districts espouse. Like, how many of these &#8220;movements&#8221; go by the wayside when a politician moves, foundation money dries up, or another non-profit comes up with a bigger and even better idea that&#8217;s <em>totally</em> researched-based?</p>
<p>You&#8217;d be right to say that, because policymakers don&#8217;t actually take education research seriously, it&#8217;s harder for us to take education research on the whole seriously (except those who confirm our biases), the education research that actually <em>might</em> make our students learn better gets lost in the shuffle. The words &#8220;sustainability,&#8221; &#8220;quality,&#8221; and &#8220;systems&#8221; come up so often in edu-jargon, but many education firms are in the business of moving statistics for their specific bias, and not for the benefit of schools writ large.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a scary prospect for an educator who&#8217;s just trying to make sense of it all. Of course, the clash between researchers and <a href="http://www.educationrethink.com/2012/09/i-dont-believe-in-research.html">practitioners is nothing new</a>, but, like most of these boondoggles, it&#8217;s worth re-examining so we can get to some real work. The more years I accumulate in this profession, the more techniques I find useful from colleagues who aren&#8217;t in the education research field. If we want to see real movement on education-related research, maybe researchers and practitioners should sit at the same tables.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s pedagogy over everything. How do we have better conversations on what works?</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/">What Works For My Kids</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="//feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/BmEd5fc4T90" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/feed/12http://thejosevilson.com/what-works-for-my-kids/Why We Need Black History Month In The First PlaceJose Vilson2015-02-22T15:36:08-08:00http://thejosevilson.com/?p=14447<p>Recently, PBS Newshour asked for my thoughts on Black History Month. After noticing that even some people of color railed against the idea of such a month, I decided to write a primer on why we needed them and why this matters for our students, all of them: I wanted to give the students a 10-minute lecture on the fact that groups used to lynch people of color for public ...
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/">Why We Need Black History Month In The First Place</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p><p>Recently, PBS Newshour asked for my thoughts on Black History Month. After noticing that even some people of color railed against the idea of such a month, I decided to write a primer on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/black-history-month-helping-students-understand-role-history/">why we needed them and why this matters for our students</a>, all of them:</p>
<blockquote><p>I wanted to give the students a 10-minute lecture on the fact that groups used to lynch people of color for public display, that Emmett Till was around their age when he was savagely beaten and killed for supposedly flirting with a white women, that at their age, I saw Rodney King get beaten on video for trivial matters, and that Amadou Diallo, the man who police officers shot at 41 times after mistaking a wallet for a gun, worked in a grocery store I frequented in high school.</p>
<p>Instead, I said that I too knew how they felt, and I too saw what they saw, and I too wanted justice for the murders of young men and women of color. I also mentioned how their feelings might be further complicated by having relatives in the police and armed forces. I don’t believe they are bad people, but, as with anything, sometimes the jobs we do puts us at odds with the people we want to be. That includes teachers. The conversation showed me why highlighting their voices mattered more than my own.</p></blockquote>
<p>Read more here. Share. Comment. Thanks!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/activist-photographers-who-fought-for-civil-rights/">photo c/o</a></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com/why-we-need-black-history-month-in-the-first-place/">Why We Need Black History Month In The First Place</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thejosevilson.com">The Jose Vilson</a>.</p>
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